1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mechanism that is equipped to penetrate deep into the ground beyond the length of the mechanism. The present invention is a device that is actuated by inducing vibrations in the ultrasonic frequency range to impact a penetration bit in the sonic frequency range. The invention performs penetration of various media that include rocks, ice and soil. In the embodiment of the invention the medium is cored and the cored material is removed from the borehole, and emptied outside the borehole and the process is repeated till the desired depth is reached.
2. Background of the Invention
There are many areas that require effective drilling and coring operation to make boreholes and extract material from a medium. Some of the areas for which such applications are used include planetary exploration, military, construction, police investigations, geology, archeology, search and rescue and games. Deep drilling is conducted by cumbersome and heavy mechanisms that consume large amounts of power limiting the possibilities that can be considered.
The capability of existing rotary coring mechanisms is limited by power and mass requirements and is constrained by the operation environment. Typically, a rotary corer that produces 10 mm cores in hard rocks requires at least 20–30 watts of power. The drilling rigs cannot be duty cycled without a staggering loss of efficiency. On start-up the drilling motors can demand as much as 3–4 times larger electrical currents than those during continuous operations. In contrast, the drive mechanism that is responsible for the operation of this invention uses less than 20% of the current that is used by conventional methods. These corers require over 100-N of axial preload, where 150-N being a typical number. During core initiation, the drill walk can induce torques on the drilling platform that may exceed 30-N·m and tangential forces in excess of 100-N. Drill chatter delivers low frequency (2–10 Hz), high force perturbations on the drilling platform limiting conventional corer applications to very stable and massive platforms. In hard rocks, conventional drillers and corers lose the advantage that they sometimes demonstrate in soft materials. In hard rocks, conventional corers stop drilling by shearing and spoliation and become grinders. The latter process is accompanied by at least a 300% increase in consumed energy per unit length of the core. In addition, because the grinding mechanism is determined by the compression failure of the rock, the sharp teeth of the corers must be re-sharpened frequently. The sharpness of bits has to be monitored because otherwise the heat generation at the tip may increase by a factor of 10. This increase is accompanies with a similar drop in drilling efficiency and often it is causing burning or melting of the drill bit.
Non-traditional drilling technologies that include laser, electron beam, microwave, jet, and others are usually competitive only in applications that are not power limited. Typically, down-the-well energy required to remove a unit volume of rock for “modern” technologies are the same as grinding and melting, that is 3 and 5 times higher, correspondingly, than that for shear drilling. Unfortunately, the ratio of down-the-well power delivered vs. input power generation is below several percent vs. 10%–30% for conventional drills. Thus, many applications do not have enough power to employ non-traditional drilling technologies.
It is the object of this invention to provide drilling mechanism that penetrates deep into various media reaching beyond its penetrator length. In addition, it is the object of this invention to provide a device that is lightweight, compact and consumes low amounts of power. Further, it is the object of this invention to provide deep penetration mechanisms that can operate at low and high temperatures and plurality of pressure levels.